NationStates Jolt Archive

Today marks the first anniversary (http://www.nationstates.net/news/2004/06/28/index.html) of the Jolt move, and I thought I'd give my thoughts on the changes that the move has brought to both the game and the forums.

First of all, the game. Most of the changes game-side have been minor but positive. NScode for WFEs, the "telegram" link on the sidebar, the addition of the areas of government spending and the first login date on the XML feed, repeals and resolution numbering - all of these are welcome additions to the NationStates game experience, and I'd like to thank the administrators for creating them. The general interface of NationStates remains solid, and although I would still like to see the login box that appears when one is already logged in to a nation brought back, the inconvenience is fairly minor.

There are two minor post-Jolt problems I have experienced that do lie to the game. First, voting on UN resolutions does not finish at 5 PM Eastern like they used to, but at a seemingly random hour that I have been unable to determine. I would be interested in knowing whether there is any fixed time that UN resolution voting closes, and if so what it is. The second issue is with the randomisation of server update times for given regions. The chief purpose of these seems to have been to tranform the server-update invasion game from one of data-gathering and timing to one of sheer numbers. It also provides a greater advantage to the incumbent Delegate, as it is no longer feasible to jump into a region one minute prior to the update.

However, the game side of NationStates is under the control of the NationStates administrators and moderators. As could be expected, they've done a good job. The major downside of the Jolt move came from the forum side of Jolt, which are under the control of unnamed non-NationStatesers.

The problem with making complaints about the forum is that I don't know where to make them. I don't like to put them in this forum, as I know the NationStates admins (although I still think that [violet], Sal, and [RepProd] should have administrative access on the Jolt forum system) can't do anything to address my concerns. The Jolt "technical" forum (forum 12) seems to be mostly hardware/software problems, and the forum-issues-related threads don't seem to get answered by people that actually know what they are talking about. As for the Jolt "suggestions & ideas" forum (forum 56), suffice it to say that a thread posted there in February complaining about the search flood control being excessive still has no replies. I don't know if I've been spoiled by the friendly nature of those who run NationStates, but I feel like the only way to note my concerns is to post them here and hope they magically filter up to the people with the power to do something about it. I apologize to the NationStatesers reading this for that.

That disclaimer being said, my chief problems with the forums follow (okay, so lack of control is one of my chief problems with the forums), in no particular order.

The Profiles - I don't actually care about not being able to see profiles (we didn't have them pre-Jolt anyway). However, one important detail is that our national founding dates are locked up in the profile. Although for newer nations, these dates exist in XML feeds (thank you Sal for that), for an older nation like mine my founding date is essentially lost. Which angers me a lot, given that I first thought of this back in April 2004 (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=323536).
The Skin - Ever since it was first unveiled in May 2004, people have been saying how ugly this skin is. At the time, I distinctly recall moderators saying that it was just a default-ish skin and would be changed. It's a year later, and we still have the ugly skin. Is this still on the to-do list?
The User Rank Titles - Yes, there's nothing we can do about them (my reading of the vBulletin user manual indicates that there's no way to give the "NationStates" usergroup a special rank set). But they're still idiotic. Incidentally, I'd be perfectly happy if all of Jolt had to use our old titles.
The Search Engine - While it's nice being able to full-text search the forums, the search engine doesn't search any posts made prior to the move. Although full-name search works on pre-move posts, this is often offset by the horrible three-minute flood control. I could understand thirty-second flood control on searches, but three minutes seems a bit excessive, given that the old forums would occasionally be able to let you search multiple times inside of three minutes.
The Smileys There are many smileys in the Jolt smiley set that serve no useful purpose in discussion. I miss :twisted:, which was much more useable than the Jolt guns and radioactive goo. As for fluffles....let's just not go there.

Of course, I'm not going to pretend that the move hasn't had its benefits on the forum side, too. Such as:

The Forum Speed - Usually, these forums are a lot faster than the old ones were. This is their major saving virtue, usually used to justify all of the above. Although it occasionally breaks down (at which point the old forums seem preferable), the fact that these forums are actually useable are a major point in their favor. The one downside of this is that it may cause a decrease in the quality of the posts, but that's just human nature.
The Lack of Purges - For me, this is the best part about having working forums. So much of NationStates's history was lost to the purges that occured in an attempt to speed up the forums that it's nice to have all of the threads from September 2003 onwards preserved, accessible, and not under threat of imminent deletion.
The Variable Page Lengths - One of the best ways I've found for digging up old threads is by maximizing the amount of threads viewable on one forum page and digging backwards. On the old forums, this was impossible and due to the slowness, looking for old threads could take hours where it now takes a few minutes.

What I've been wondering for a while is why NationStates couldn't retain independent forums (not necessarily phpBB, mind you), but on the fast Jolt servers. Then we might be able to retain the positives of the Jolt move and lose the negatives.

Anyway, those are just one person's thoughts on the Jolt move, how it's gone, and how NationStates has changed because of it. I've spent about half of my time in this game on ServePath and the other half on Jolt, so I guess I'm in a halfway-decent position to say what I think. Of course, your opinions may vary widely.

The Liberal Unitary Republic of Goobergunchia
Founder of Democratic Underground
Nasicournian Officer
Making NationStates Better since 17 May 2003
Poster of the Last Post (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=6527316) on the Classic Forums

Wow. Very, very true. I think that this basically sums up the current state of things concerning NS and Jolt.

Good post.

I can address one of those, albeit speculatively. The profiles won't be coming back until a rather nasty security hole gets fixed. I'm pretty sure this will have to be created in upgraded vBulletin code rather than simple settings. As you have noted, being tenants on these forums rather than owners does not give us the opportunity to fix what we want, when we want.

I'd love to wipe the rank titles from the forums entirely. For that matter, I'd love to lose the postcount, as it only serves to encourage people to post-whore, thinking that postcount=legitimacy. I much prefer forums where that information is suppressed, and posters are judged by the quality and thoughtfulness of their posts, rather than their ability to mindless press "Submit Reply".

As for the graphical emoticons (the so-called and misnamed smileys) ... they say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, the picture says to me, "I can't express myself through the use of language, so I'll use this clichéd cop-out instead." If this were my forum, they would be permanently disabled. All of them.

I'd love to wipe the rank titles from the forums entirely. For that matter, I'd love to lose the postcount, as it only serves to encourage people to post-whore, thinking that postcount=legitimacy. I much prefer forums where that information is suppressed, and posters are judged by the quality and thoughtfulness of their posts, rather than their ability to mindless press "Submit Reply".

As for the graphical emoticons (the so-called and misnamed smileys) ... they say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, the picture says to me, "I can't express myself through the use of language, so I'll use this clichéd cop-out instead." If this were my forum, they would be permanently disabled. All of them.And the forum you run would probably be much more efficient and streamlined than any existing forum today. I know you're a network admin, but can you do PHP or Perl? I would love to see something like this.

As for the graphical emoticons (the so-called and misnamed smileys) ... they say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, the picture says to me, "I can't express myself through the use of language, so I'll use this clichéd cop-out instead."

Ah, but Fris, :fluffle: denotes just how much I feel for you! ;)

In all seriousness, Goober, your observations never cease to amaze me! I think many NSers who were here for the transition understand and agree with your observations. I know I do, and I couldn't have summed some of the items up any better!

One of my biggest concerns, as we'll all note, is the ups and downs of the Jolt server hosting our forum. I'm not sure the technicalities behind it, whether or not all the forums are hosted on one central server or spread out, but it seems these database errors and what-not (while better in recent days) suggest that a long-term strategy for forum stability is necessary and you would never be able to find out if it's being worked on from the Jolt forums.

I must say, the one gripe I do have with Jolt as a whole, is the seemingly lack of moderation and information sharing that goes on elsewhere. I, too, am spoiled by the upfront attitude of the NS moderators and Sal in particular who lets us know when something is up, for the most part. Elsewhere on Jolt, trolls run rampant and in many cases, nothing is done about it. I wasn't expecting that, especially after signing up for Londinium and realizing that nobody really cares about their forums much less the rest of Jolt. Sometimes I think the rest of Jolt really has brought down the NS forums, especially as of late where you can't walk into the cesspool that is General without a biohazard suit.

I don't know where to put this, but it vaguely concerns the Jolt move.
I have discovered that the world fact-book character limit (including spaces) is 534. Did this change from the move to Jolt?

{snip}

For that matter, I'd love to lose the postcount, as it only serves to encourage people to post-whore, thinking that postcount=legitimacy. I much prefer forums where that information is suppressed, and posters are judged by the quality and thoughtfulness of their posts, rather than their ability to mindless press "Submit Reply".

While people can make the postcount=legitimacy error you mention, I think the postcount should be retained. It, plus the Join Date give a useful indication of how active the person whose post you're reading has been.

Of course, it's not complete information (e.g., there's no way of knowing if the 24 month old nation with 50 posts doesn't post much, or was "dead" for a long time), but I think it can help you get an idea of the person you're with.

And it makes it simple to spot the post-whores. ;)

NB: all uses of "you," "you're," etc. are generic.

While people can make the postcount=legitimacy error you mention, I think the postcount should be retained. It, plus the Join Date give a useful indication of how active the person whose post you're reading has been.

Of course, it's not complete information (e.g., there's no way of knowing if the 24 month old nation with 50 posts doesn't post much, or was "dead" for a long time), but I think it can help you get an idea of the person you're with.

And it makes it simple to spot the post-whores. ;)Actually, I disagree. The way to tell a post-whore is by the quality of his/her posts, not his/her post count. For example, a major RPer and sensible debater who joined back in November 2002 with 11,000 posts would not be a post-whore, while a spammer from December 2004 with 9,000 posts is.

For example, a major RPer and sensible debater who joined back in November 2002 with 11,000 posts would not be a post-whore, while a spammer from December 2004 with 9,000 posts is.

Not necessarily, in the latter case, if those 9000 posts are thoughtful, I would hardly consider that person a post-whore.